Alexander Jacob Schem

Alexander Jacob Schem (16 March 1826, in Wiedenbrück, Prussia – 21 May 1881, in West Hoboken, New Jersey) was a German-American writer, editor and educator.

He attended the Paderborn gymnasium from 1839 to 1843,[1] and then studied theology and philology at the Universities of Bonn and Tübingen.

[1] In 1854, he became professor of ancient and modern languages in Dickinson College, but he resigned in 1860 to devote himself to literature and journalism.

From 1874 to his death, he held the office of assistant superintendent of the public schools in New York City.

He prepared, with George Richard Crooks, a Latin-English Dictionary (Philadelphia, 1857), and published several editions of Schem's Statistics of the World; the American Ecclesiastical Year-Book (New York, 1860); the Ecclesiastical Almanac (1868 and 1869); and, with Henry Kiddle, a Cyclopædia of Education (1877), which was followed by two annual supplements called the Year-Book of Education (1878 and 1879).